Formula for love: How dating reality shows achieve quick attraction
A scene from dating reality show "Better Late Than Single" on Netflix / Captured from YouTube
Carefully designed 'love-inducing' mechanisms underway behind the scenes
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If you watch dating reality shows closely, you’ll notice several recurring devices that seem designed to accelerate intimacy. Interestingly, these familiar “dating-show formulas” overlap with psychological effects known to increase attraction and feelings of closeness.
Time seems to move unusually fast on dating shows. After just a few dates, conversations about marriage can emerge. In real life, that might be around the time two people are exchanging phone numbers and waiting to see when they’ll meet again.
So why do contestants seem to fall in love so easily? It may not be entirely by chance. Behind the scenes are carefully designed “love-inducing” mechanisms.
A scene from ENA's "I Am Solo" / Captured from YouTube
Putting feelings into words
Dating-show producers don’t simply leave contestants alone with their emotions. They repeatedly ask questions such as, “Who are you drawn to?,” “Why do you think you’re interested in that person?” and “Were you jealous?.”
Eventually, contestants have to put into words emotions that had previously been floating around in their heads.
This resembles what psychologists call affect labeling, the process of identifying and expressing an emotion in words. A 2007 brain-imaging study published in Psychological Science found that putting feelings into words was associated with reduced activity in the amygdala, which is involved in emotional responses, and increased activity in areas of the prefrontal cortex involved in emotional regulation.
Applied to dating shows, someone who initially thinks, “I don’t know what it is, but I keep thinking about this person,” may eventually say, “I was jealous,” or “I think I’m attracted to them.”
In other words, a vague sense of interest can begin to take shape as “I like this person.”
A scene from TVING's "EXchange" / Captured from YouTube
Activities keep happening
Workshops and hands-on activities are a common feature of dating-show dates. Contestants make pottery, create perfumes or attempt to cook together. Rather than simply having two people sit across from each other in a café, producers often have them work side by side.
There may be a reason beyond making the scenes look good on screen.
Time is limited on a dating show. The kind of memories that might take weeks or months to build in real life — “Remember when we did that?” — have to be created within a matter of days.
So instead of simply having two people sit across from each other and talk about love, producers give them something to experience together first. They create a shared story that belongs to the two of them.
Psychologists have suggested that sharing new experiences with another person can have a positive effect on relationships. This is related to the concept of self-expansion, the idea that close relationships can expand a person’s sense of self through new experiences.
A 2000 study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology found that couples who engaged in novel and exciting activities together reported greater relationship quality than when they spent time together in more mundane ways. The researchers found similar results across three additional experiments.
A scene from dating reality show "Better Late Than Single" on Netflix / Captured from YouTube
More room for focusing on that one person
Contestants often have limited access to their phones and few opportunities to immerse themselves in their own hobbies or routines. When they return to the shared accommodation after a date, the person they like may be right there, laughing and talking with someone else.
It is an unusually intense environment, with little opportunity to step back from one’s emotions.
In such circumstances, rumination — repeatedly thinking about the same issue—may also come into play.
“Does that person like me?”
“What did the two of them talk about today?”
“What if they’ve started liking someone else?”
In everyday life, work, friends and hobbies can easily distract us from such thoughts. On a dating show, however, there may be far fewer ways to shift your attention elsewhere.
Interestingly, uncertainty itself can make people think more about someone. A 2011 study published in Psychological Science found that participants who were uncertain about how much another person liked them thought about that person more and experienced greater attraction. The researchers concluded that thinking more about the person helped increase attraction.
Dating shows essentially remove many of the distractions of ordinary life while leaving a question mark over the other person’s feelings.
And when contestants finally discover that the person they’ve been thinking about feels the same way, those emotions can intensify rapidly.
'Dating-show effect' in real life?
Most people aren’t going to end up trapped in a shared house with a potential romantic partner. But some of the conditions created by dating shows can be recreated in everyday life.
When getting to know someone, try doing something together rather than simply sitting across from each other and talking. It doesn’t have to be anything elaborate. Even a small experience that later becomes, “Remember when we did that?” can become a shared memory.
Take the conversation one step further, too. Instead of stopping at favorite foods and Myers-Briggs Type Indicator types, ask what has made the other person laugh recently or what they’ve been thinking about lately. If you’re interested, gradually sharing some of your own feelings can also help create a deeper connection.
It may also help to put your phone away for a while and give the person in front of you your full attention.
None of this guarantees that you’ll fall in love. But these small efforts may increase the chances that, after you say goodbye, you’ll be the person they find themselves thinking about once more.
This article from Kormedi.com, Korea’s top health care and medical portal, is translated by a generative AI system and edited by The Korea Times.